iPress / Beehive / Millie blueprint:

Discusssion areas

Specification Discussions need to be substantially better, and more varied, than the usual 'plain vanilla' threaded forum. We have specified a number of characteristics, based on our previous work with children, that will enable a number of 'standard discussion types' to be offered. Over time it is likely that children, teachers or parents may express preferences for more of these 'standard discussion types' and, if the components match the grid below, this should be straightforward. Offering users too many at the initial stage however would be confusing and clearly it would be foolish to write a bespoke solution for each, thus the discussion 'engine' should offer these features, and invoke various subsets to build a suite of 'standard discussion types' . In the table below the features are either invoked (Yes) or not (No) for each 'standard discussion type'. In a few cases choice is offered (Choose) and would be invoked at the moment when a discussion is originated. An explanation of the terms can be found below the table.

		Threaded discussion	Round Robin	Brainstorm	Formal debate	Play transcript	Q&As
Time limits		Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Contribution limits		No	Yes	No	Yes	No	No
Participant limits		No	Yes	No	No	No	No
Voting		No	No	Choose	Yes	No	No
Show attribution		Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Mask identity (but still capture it of course).		No	No	No	No	Choose	Choose
See contributions once I've made mine		No	Choose	No	No	No	No
To do list		Choose	No	No	No	No	No
Presentation:
Linear display		Yes	No	No	No	Yes	Yes
Scattered		No	No	Yes	No	No	No
Circular		No	Yes	No	No	No	No
Primary media iconic		No	Yes	No	No	No	No
In formal columns / grid		No	No	No	Yes	No	Yes
Introduction + summary		No	No	No	Yes	No	No
Milestoning		Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Features unpacked:

Time limits	With most collaborative asynchronous activity closure is a big issue. Apart from the Q&A 'discussion type' we anticipate that every 'discussion type' will have a finish time defined when it is created.
Contribution limits	For the Round Robin and the Formal Debate participants will only be able to make a contribution in an ordered fashion. With the Round Robin for example every contributor will make only one contribution at a time. Invoking this 'rule' means contributions will be 'one at a time'. For the formal debate this will be topped and tailed with a pair of opposing statements introducing the debate, and a pair of statements summarising the two sides at the end. This should still fit in with the rule as long as the right people start! Another complication occurs when one participant does not want to contribute. One simple solution would be to allow them to offer a "space" as a null contribution.
Participant limits	We will need to limit the number of participants only in the Round Robin simply because there are limits to what we can display with HTML. However, all 'discussion types' will have effective limits too, in that only members of a particular community can contribute.
Voting	At the end of a discussion a vote might be appropriate. We have invoked this for the Formal Debate and left it as a choice for the Brainstorm.
Show attribution	By and large it is intended that participants will always know who offered which contribution. However, with the Brainstorm ideas are just thrown into the discussion and only at the end of this initial 'brainstorming' session will they be shown with attribution. If a vote is chosen, this would happen after that.
Mask identity (but still capture it of course).	There may be discussion areas (sex, health, personnal issues...) where individuals do not want to display their identity, and may want to adopt a default one, or an avatar. As long as they are clear that the database captures their identity and that the discussion leader might see those identities, such a masking might be appropriate in some circumstances. We have offered it as a choice in Play Transcripts and in Q&As.
See contributions once I've made mine	In some instances we might expect that participants can only see other's contributions once they have made their own. We have invoked this only as a choice for the Round Robin.
To do list	Often, discussions lead to the generation of "To Do" lists mailed to individual's email accounts. We have offered this option in the basic "Threaded discussion".
Presentation:
Linear display	Items simply displayed in a 'down the screen' order.
Scattered	Items placed around the screen (big table - random allocation to cells?)
Circular	A circle is calculated on the screen and contributions are posted around it (obviously we need a limited number of participants for this).
Primary media iconic	Many children - particularly dyslexic - like small icons to annotate their media and thus offer a token representation of each contribution - text, movies, sounds, pictures - rather than the item itslef or a shortened version. Thus a debate might be shown as a series of icons - ideally a conjunction of the authors image thumbnail and a media type signifier (my head and a speech balloon for example)
In formal columns / grid	Columns and grids work as a good alternative to straight narrative - for example with a formal debate allocating each contribution to a "for" or "against" column will work well (contributor chooses).
Introduction + summary	Looking at discussions (for example in a search engine...) often the first two lines are displayed, or a machine generated summary is posted. We have only suggested this option for Formal Debate but need to discuss it - the quality of the summary may influence where else it might be appropriate.
Milestoning	As with other areas of the whole service the opportunity to post a "milestone" which captures a moment in any discussion is a powerful way of allowing children to show the process and assist their teachers in offering formative assessment.

discussion blueprint | portfolio of behaviours | mail blueprint | project plan timings

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